. The children's book of stars . ow, when the North Pole is bowed toward thesun, the sun appears to us to be higher in the the British Isles he never climbs quite to thezenith, as we call the point straight above our heads;he always keeps on the southern side of that, sothat our shadows are thrown northward at mid-day,but yet he gets nearer to it than he does in at the picture of the earth as it is in we have long nights and short days, and thesun never appears to climb very high, because weare turned away from him. During the short dayswe do not receive a great


. The children's book of stars . ow, when the North Pole is bowed toward thesun, the sun appears to us to be higher in the the British Isles he never climbs quite to thezenith, as we call the point straight above our heads;he always keeps on the southern side of that, sothat our shadows are thrown northward at mid-day,but yet he gets nearer to it than he does in at the picture of the earth as it is in we have long nights and short days, and thesun never appears to climb very high, because weare turned away from him. During the short dayswe do not receive a great deal of heat, and duringthe long night the heat we have received has timeto evaporate to a great extent. These two reasons—the greater or less height of the sun in the sky andthe length of the days—are quite enough to accountfor the difference between our summer and is one rather interesting point to remember,and that is that in the Northern Hemisphere, whetherit is winter or summer, the sun is south at mid-day,. THE EARTHS BROTHERS AND SISTER 41 so that you can always find the north then, for yourshadow will point northwards. New Zealand and Australia and other countriesplaced in the Southern Hemisphere, as we are inthe Northern, have their summer while we havewinter, and winter while we have summer, and theirsummer is warmer than ours, because it comes whenthe earth in its journey is three million miles nearerto the sun than in our summer. All this seems to refer to the earth alone, andthis chapter should be about the planets ; but, afterall, what applies to one planet applies to another insome degree, and we can turn to the others withmuch more interest now to see if their axes arebowed toward the sun as ours is. It is behevedthat in the case of Mercury, in regard to its pathround the sun, the axis is straight up and down ; ifit is the changes of the seasons must depend on thenearness of Mercury to the sun and nothing else,and as he is a great deal nearer at


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